Where To Send Broken Products
August 7, 2007 by Greg
When my digital camera broke beyond repair, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. An article written almost a year ago at lifehacker had given me the instructions.
Rather than just sending your broken stuff to a landfill, pack it up and ship it back to the manufacturer with a letter asking for a new one. You will be amazed by the results. There are no guarantees with this method, but you definitely won’t get a replacement if you throw the product away. This method gets rid of the product just as much as throwing it away does, but it gives a human being at a real company a chance to demonstrate just how much they stand behind their products. You’d be surprised how many will. A squeaky wheel gets oiled. It works, and the trick is all in the letter.
Letter written, I was ready to go. But where to send it? Like most companies, Canon has carefully hidden their contact information on their website. This is when Computer Hope came in. A quick search from their front page queries there index of contact information for computer related companies.
Two dollars later my package is on it’s way back to Lake Success, New York. I haven’t heard back yet, but I already feel a small sense of satisfaction knowing it’s out of my hands.
Life Hacker: Don’t trash broken stuff; send it back
Computer Hope
I know someone with a Kitchen Aide Mixer… It’s real nice.
I wonder if this will work with empty bottles of Moskovskaya?
I say try it…
I know this guy who had a 30 year old pair of boots he bought from LL Bean that have been through some serious shit. I’m talking like beaten to hell, fallen apart, so that there was barely a recognizable pair of boots. Well, he decided to send them back with a letter saying that the boots were defective…and guess what??? They sent him a brand new spanking pair of the same boots, free of charge. Now that is standing behind your product!
[...] Just a few days after I sent back my broken items back to their manufacturers I received an email from Creative Labs titled “Your RMA Has Been Shipped.” Excitedly I tracked the package. It arrived only 8 days after I had originally dropped the broken headphones off at the post office. In the box I found a nicely bubble wrapped pair of shiny new headphones just like the ones that originally came with my zen vision mp3 player. Rock on. It works! Go Creative! [...]